Wednesday 29 August 2012

Thanet District Council and the Heritage Open Days, a good chance to experience vertigo.


Every year at the beginning of September some local historic buildings are open to the public for free and every year I seem to have problems with the council and the various websites promoting this.

I have tried to pre-empt the problem this year by phoning up the council officer in charge of promoting this and hopefully we will get a complete list published on the council’s tourism website.

Having given up trying to find some of the buildings I expected or knew to be taking part I phoned the council’s last remaining council run tourist information office, this is in the Droit House in Margate.

I have had strong words with council today about what happens when you dial their number, so I am hoping for a change, here is the number 01843 577577 having listened to the usual load of twaddle, you are then asked to press 1, 2, 3 and so on, where in most cases you get another series of twaddle followed by the thing hanging up on you. Pressing option one or six gets you through to a human being at the time of writing.

As an adept at using the Visit Thanet website, this is what I can find there at the moment.

·                                 Open Days at Pugin's Grange

Sat 8 Sep 2012



Heritage Open Days at St George's Church


·                                


Heritage Open Weekend at Quex Park


·                                


Flower Festival at St Laurence Church


·                                


Heritage Open Days at St George's Church


·                                

        

Tue 11 Sep 2012

·                                 Open Days at Pugin's Grange
·                                  

The main opening that I know of that isn’t mentioned is Sunday 9th. September 2012 the Montefiore Synagogue and Mausoleum Open from 9.30am to 2.00pm.

No council owned buildings seem to be taking part in this international event, I guess many of the major council owned public buildings in Ramsgate are derelict and would require hard hats, this does make you wonder about the others in the rest of Thanet, Northdown House and the Tudor House spring to mind.

Next the vertigo part and what historic buildings you can visit for nothing.

At Quex Park Birchington you can visit The Round Tower, not sure if you can go far enough up this to experience vertigo.

At St Laurence Church you can go up the tower.

At The Grange you can go up the tower.

The high point though is going up the tower of St Georges Church in Ramsgate.

Here are the pictures from last year.




http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/rsgct/id5.htm

Sunday 26 August 2012

Ramsgate August Bank Holiday 2012 Pictures Steam, Boats and Art

If you are wondering what to do this weekend, you could do worse than go down to Ramsgate Harbour and enjoy the event on there.
If you take some old rope with you, you can like in Aladdin exchange it for new rope, the old rope will form rope sculptures that will replace Rodin’s The Kiss in the foyer of The Turner Contemporary.

While on the subject of rope, you can learn to make rope, courtesy of Chatham Dockyard, while you are there.
There is a rather unusual beam engine running there there, which I think is called a steamboat doctor pump and was used on these vessels in America to pump water, from the river to the boilers until the 1850s. 
 As someone who once owned a Reliant Regal, I never aspired to the more advanced and expensive Robin, I was rather taken by this 1919 AC trike, AC went on to produce the faster Cobra series.
It is possible to go on some of the vessels there, which particularly amused my children so is a consideration if you have children about you this weekend.

Ramsgate events are often difficult to describe, it is a case of we all enjoyed ourselves, perhaps the pictures on my camera card will help, here are the links:


http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop812/id9.htm


Talking to various volunteers there, I gather the event was restricted to only two days by the council who wouldn’t allow it to run for the whole three days of the bank holiday. Presumably they are wary of people in Ramsgate enjoying themselves too much.

There was also some concern as one of the café owners has threatened to sue because of smuts on their upholstery caused by the coal fires powering the various steamboats there.

This was an aspect of the compensation culture we now live in that I had never considered, perhaps we should all be careful about lighting a coal fire this Christmas.    

I may ramble on here some more. 


Saturday 25 August 2012

August Bank Holiday Weekend, what’s on in Ramsgate.

 This weekend there are two major events on in Ramsgate

 The maritime museum is holding a steam event, on Sunday 26th and Monday 27th, arranged by the Steam Museum Trust and happening at Pier Yard and the on the crosswall.  It will feature several visiting vessels, S.T. Cervia in steam, various steam engines, cars, etc and a fairground.
 The  “Summer Squall” arts festival is on all over the town, the program for this is available as a pdf file at http://ramsgatearts.org/summer_squall_2012.pdf

The pictures are of steam preparations.

I did manage to skive off work in my bookshop for a short time today and take some pictures of activities in the vicinity of the harbour today, here is the link http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop812/id7.htm

Note the carousel, it is one of the best in the UK and I believe the only one with bears, note the carved running board, the names on the gallopers will be those of the showman’s family.  

Monday 20 August 2012

Margate, The Erotic Turner Contemporary, Toilets, Dreamland, Regeneration, Parking and Pictures.

With the heat, weather forecast, the previous post about Margate, I figured Margate would be at its busiest so I went to see the situation for myself yesterday. I guess I know Margate fairly well and understand how it functioned with Dreamland and now with The Turner Contemporary.

Back in the early 70s when I worked as an engineer at Dreamland, The Lido and Margate’s Golden Mile, I didn’t have a problem parking that I remember, but yesterday parking was the key issue.

I went to some boot fairs during the early hours, mainly because it was too hot to sleep, boot fairs now seem to be mostly made up of things that failed to sell on Ebay, I think I arrived in Margate at about 10am and parked on the Dreamland site, this is £2.50 for all day and I guess is where most of Margate’s visitors park.

I was greatly in need of the loo and made my way to The Turner Contemporary which is very convenient in this respect and thoughtfully pondered the steady stream of people entering the gallery, making for the loos and then leaving the gallery.

I wonder do these people figure in the statistics, a quick look at the erotic art exhibition by, Turner, Rodin and Emin and I was in the mood to paint, this requires a seat and a cup of tea.


The picture above was inspired by erotic aspects of The Turner Contemporary, the dark blue bit in the middle that should have been a bluey grey, was caused by shock induced by an artistic incident, I dipped my brush in my tea by mistake.
 For a cup of tea, served in a civilised fashion at a reasonable price with an excellent view I don’t think you can beat Lola and Company on the harbour arm. My wife had Coffee, which she said was very good too.
Margate beach seemed as busy as it used to be in the 70s by the time I had painted my picture and finished my tea and evidently Margate is where the government funding is going in Thanet, which raises the question of infrastructure if the results are successful. 
The area outside The Turner Contemporary already runs a continual level of parking rage, as people turn up by car to what is supposed to be a national attraction, only to find they can’t park.

By about 3pm I had had enough of crowds and returned to the car park on the dreamland site, it was completely full with hot and fairly angry people driving around in it looking for non-existent spaces, I removed my car with difficult due to the three others who were all trying to get into the empty space at the same time.


If you go to any commercially run place where there are likely to be a lot of people turning up to spend their money then parking the car is not usually a problem.

Supermarkets, boot fairs and so on have got this sorted out properly.

With The Turner Contemporary the commercial aspect isn’t a problem, Kent County Council have taken £1.6 million out of our tax contributions and given it to the gallery to pay for running expenses this year.

Large amounts of government funding will be made available for the Regeneration of Dreamland and presumably a great many people will turn up there, but the parking issue needs solving, otherwise they will drive around in circles, until they are very angry and then go elsewhere. I doubt that there will be parking problems at any of the competing theme parks.  

here is the link to the pictures straight from my camera card of yesterdays visit to Margate http://michaelsbookshop.com/laptop812/id6.htm 

I will ramble on here.      

Saturday 18 August 2012

Thanet Council’s Dream of Dreamland


Unless you have missed all of the local news you will be aware that Thanet District Council have won their case to compulsorily purchase Dreamland. Like The Turner Contemporary this is a further move to regenerate Margate using public finance.

I am now going to speculate about the funding, this is not area where I have much expertise, so corrective comment would be helpful.

The money the council will use to change the derelict site into a heritage theme park, about £10m comes from a £3m lottery grant, a £3.7m sea change grant and about £4m from Thanet District Council.

The other part, where I am a bit more mystified about is the money to pay for the compulsory purchase, what is the site worth?

I suppose the answer to this one depends on what the site can be used for, for instance if it were agricultural land and the owner was only allowed to grow crops on it, then the site value would be less than £1m.

At the other end of the scale, if it were prime building land one would expect the site value to be something very much higher.

When the site was operated as an amusement park, like any business the site value related to the profits generated by that business. Of course the value of the site in terms of selling it as part of a business wouldn’t be separated out in that way. In a purely hypothetical situation, it would be possible to buy an amusement park as a going concern for perhaps £5m mostly based on the profits made by the amusement park, say £0.5m per year. It could be possible to secure grant funding to improve the site, say £3m and then sell the best rides for a couple of million. I guess the net result of selling the best rides would mean that the amusement park failed but wouldn’t have cost anything, so it would then be reasonable to say that as the amusement park had failed the site would be better suited to something else, I guess the highest value land would be land with permission to build housing on.

Anyway all this muddled and hypothetical reasoning leads to the question, how much money will the council have to find to purchase the land, will it be related to the site’s value as housing land, which I guess would be over £20m or will it be related to the site’s value as an amusement park.

There is another side to this coin, which it doesn’t actually take a lot of time to set up a fun fair on the Dreamland site, the links below take you to pictures of the fun fair there last year.




I think this funfair took about a day to set up.

In a general sense I don’t think most heritage rides take more than about four hours to put up, this is an area where I do have some expertise as I worked, as an engineer, for want of a better word, for Jimmy Chipperfied’s fairs in the 1960s. We moved the fair every week and got paid for the week when all the rides were up and running properly.

Friday 17 August 2012

Thanet history book sale, phoning the council, phoning the police and other Friday ramblings.

 I have just changed the local books window display and made up a sale of sun faded books from it, I have added various proofing copies, shop soiled local books and local books that probably have something or another wrong with them. Publishing and printing about 150 books about this part of Kent I get quite a few of these.
 I have been going round in the circles of phoning the council in order to find out what happened at last night’s overview and scrutiny meeting relating to the call in of The Royal Sands development agreement decision made by the council cabinet.
 Why the council don’t put this sort of information on their website, first thing in the morning on the day after the meeting, god alone knows, chasing around for an officer who was at the meeting for everyone who phones up to find out must be a considerable waste of resources.
 Anyway I now have an answer, which is scrutiny have asked for an external review of the financial side of the deal.
 For me the problem here is more the secrecy and not so much the council getting good value for the site. An example of what I mean here is the previous development agreement, I think it fair to say that aspects of this where not as well written as they could have been, the most problematic thing being that there is really no hard and fast time limit in it. As far as I can tell the developer could sit on the site for another five years blaming market conditions and not really doing anything.
 However back several years to when the development agreement came before cabinet, it was a secret document, so no one could say. “Look here chaps, you could drive a coach-and-four through this agreement.
 Of course after about a year of foi requesting I got the agreement but by then it was too late.     
 Part of the reason for the shop window change was a cracked pane of glass, I am afraid window dressing isn’t a vocation I have a calling for, so the windows don’t get changed very often.
Just looked at the picture above, the later one below shows the potential pitfall of building in front of the cliff.

 When I first opened the bookshop here in Ramsgate, the shop had very large plate glass windows and when one got broken, in the middle of the night, I would call the police who would turn up during the boarding up process.
 This is a situation that moved on the point where one would get woken up say at one in the morning, be boarded by about two and then woken up again by the police at about three. This then moved on to two police officers arriving the next day and asking me if I would like victim counselling and support, so in the interests of crime reduction I no longer report broken shop windows.
 A manifold improvement in crime statistics, being woken up in the night and great savings in counselling, though no so good for the glass companies, because as the big sheets were broken, I have had the made into smaller sheets.
 I will ramble on here, perhaps.





Wednesday 15 August 2012

Granville House Ramsgate to be sold by auction


Having recently published a book about the history of The Granville in Ramsgate, click on the link to buy it online http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/catalogue/the_granville_hotel___the_story_of_the_granville_hotel_ramsgate_1869_2012.htm I was interested to hear that the freehold of the building is going to be sold at auction later this year.

I did go and have a look inside the Granville not that long ago and took the inevitable photos, below are the links to the pages of photos.









After yesterday’s comments I think it best to be quite clear about this one, so here is an excerpt from the relevant document.  

Tuesday 14 August 2012

Ramsgate Cliffhanger


I have finally received the latest report on the Pleasurama cliff, here is the link http://thanetonline.com/cliff/id14.htm the picture above is of firemen digging through the rubble, looking for anyone trapped underneath it last time Ramsgate’s Eastcliff collapsed.

If you are a Thanet council taxpayer this should be of particular interest to you, it’s about three years since the council spent about £1m on the cliff, lets hope it costs a bit less this time.  

This, or something like it is going to happen every three years for the life of The Royal Sands development, it really is the only way to ensure that a 70 foot high unsupported chalk cliff is safe for the hundreds of people living in the development about 12 feet in front of it.



In view of the somewhat confused comments appearing on this post I have added a plan of the cliff façade structure, the colours showing which bits are which.

Looking at the plan (click on it compulsively to expand it) the lift is on the left the light blue line is where the site fence is that The Great Wall of Ramsgate is hung on.

The yellow green and purple line at the top is the cliff façade or cliff wall, which forms the facing to the unsupported chalk cliff.

The yellow part is what the report calls the portal section.

This is the part with shallow foundations, where the contractor has removed the dirt in front of them, it has exposed the chalky soil the foundations sit on, the report calls this “chalk sub soil”. In simple terms the concrete foundations extending a couple of metres down to the solid chalk bedrock just don’t exist. The report also says that two of the panels in this section are dangerous and will have to be hacked out and replaced.

The dark green part is what the report calls the arched section.

This is the part of the façade that was built because of the series large cliff collapses in 1937 that undermined the concrete apron at the top that holds the railings up. This part of the façade is well constructed, the foundations go down 2.5 metres below the ground.

The dark purple part is what the report calls the rendered masonry wall. 

This is the remaining part of the Victorian part of the structure the rest of this part of the façade collapsed in the 1960s and is shown in the picture at the top of the post. 

The pillars at the ends of this part have foundations extending down below the site, the middle part’s foundations were exposed by the contractor and looked as though they were sitting on a pile of earth and rubble, they have now been covered up. This part hasn’t had the upper promenade drainage improvements mentioned in the report.  

Monday 13 August 2012

Royal Sands Development on the Pleasurama Site Ramsgate Update.


The map above is of the site in 1872 and shows the site when it was a railway station, if like me you are sick to back teeth of the Pleasurama saga you can open a large version of this map, and journey around Ramsgate before the naughty 90s. the map only works properly in internet explorer, here is the link http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/map1872/id3.htm

The council have finally published the agenda for the overview and scrutiny meeting on Thursday to discuss the call in of the cabinet decision to sell the freehold of the site to the developer, click on this link to read it http://tdc-mg-dmz.thanet.gov.uk/documents/s26584/Scrutiny%20call%20In%20-%20Royal%20Sands%20Report.html?CT=2

It does give us a bit more information about what is a very important issue for Ramsgate, which the council only seem to wish to discuss in secret.

My own interest here is to try and ensure that the site has the flood risk assessment highly recommended by The Environment Agency, this link takes you to their letter about this issue http://michaelsbookshop.com/ea/id2.htm

I don’t like the idea of building a new development on a high risk flood zone without a flood risk assessment, apart form the obvious sense of blundering about in the dark, it is likely to blight the development to a greater or lesser degree, making financing in difficult economic times even more difficult.

I will add to this one as the day progresses.       

Sunday 12 August 2012

Broadstairs and Folk Week


I popped into Broadstairs today and it was absolutely packed, a mixture of the fine weather and folk week I think. I am afraid I had a fairly busy day during which I had to do a lot of other things but I did take a few pictures while I was there.

I will do my best to go over and take some more if I get time this week, parking isn’t easy in Broadstairs during folk week and there comes a point where a place is too crowded to take pictures easily.

Here is what’s on the camera card http://michaelsbookshop.com/laptop812/id5.htm

Tuesday 7 August 2012

Royal Sands Development on the Pleasurama Site in Ramsgate, OSP update.


Last week I went through the process of getting the decision on the Royal Sands Development agreement called in.

The decision as published on the council’s website is:

Decision:

“That the revised development agreement summarised in Annex 1 to the report is agreed, with delegated authority granted to the Corporate and Regulatory Services Manager to sign the final agreement, once all advance conditions are met, in consultation with the Cabinet Member for Commercial Services.
Minutes:

Councillor Bayford spoke under Council Procedure Rule 24.1, seeking assurances from officers in relation to the proposed development agreement.

On the proposal of Councillor Poole, seconded by Councillor Hart, it was RESOLVED:

THAT the revised development agreement summarised in Annex 1 to the report is agreed, with delegated authority granted to the Corporate and Regulatory Services Manager to sign the final agreement, once all advance conditions are met, in consultation with the Cabinet Member for Commercial Services.”

Truth here is I really don’t understand if the OSP (overview and scrutiny panel) actually do anything, I know they can call a decision in, whether once they have done so they then have the power, or the inclination to change that decision is something I don’t understand at all.

The run around I encountered trying to get the decision called in suggests that they are treated by officers as a nuisance that has to be negotiated, rather than some properly functioning part of the council.    

Anyway here is the email I have just sent off to the councillor and officers concerned, after being instructed by Thanet District Council’s democratic services, that this is how a member of the public communicates with the OSP.

“Ian, Mike, Harvey.

I have been told by democratic services to contact the three of you regarding the Royal Sands call in. 

Two issues here, the first being the way in which scrutiny and call in is available to a member of the public.

Could you please confirm my assumptions here, as the machinations of local government remain something of a mystery to me?

I am assuming the whole business of scrutiny costs something and that it is local taxpayers that foot the bill for this.

I am also assuming that the voting constituents of Thanet should have some point of input and instigation via officers, in the mater of scrutiny.

I am also assuming that having instigated the scrutiny of an issue a constituent should then have access to an officer who will ensure that their points are put impartially to all of the members of the scrutiny panel.

In terms of instigating the call in of The Royal Sands decision initially I tried the democratic services, customer services and emailing the chief executive route as a means of getting the decision called in. This failed and I got no email response, apart from one, from the officer who wrote the report, essentially saying that he could hardly call his own report in.

I tried the method of contacting members of scrutiny, until I reached one where the council’s website had omitted their contact details, fortunately I already had Ian’s personal email address, and contacting him via this resulted in the decision being called in.

On Friday I phoned democratic services and asked what the next stage was, mostly how I could contact an officer who would put forward my points to the scrutiny panel and what they came up with was emailing the three of you.

Now I am fairly certain that Harvey and Mike are the officers who have supported the aspects of the decision that I wish to be scrutinised and that Ian, while responsive, is likely to be unpopular with some scrutiny members, who may take a less than balanced view of anything he proposes.

I however feel that as member of the Thanet electorate, council taxpayer, business ratepayer and a resident of the ward the development is situated in, I should get my reasons for requesting a call in, put impartially, by an impartial officer, to all members of the panel. 

All that said can, you please tell me, what are the possible outcomes from calling the decision in?  Can you also provide me with contact details for the appropriate council office? 

On to second and main issue, the Royal Sands call in, which is the information I want put to all the members of the scrutiny panel, preferably by an officer who impartial.

The flood risk issue first.

Up to now officer take on this one appears to be that I am some sort of crank, who has taken issue with the development of the site and wishes to see another fifteen years of dereliction.

This is not the case, my objective here is to ensure that the development, is if built, both safe and viable in terms of its funding. My assumption is that the construction of a new residential development on an EA designated high risk flood zone, without any site specific flood risk assessment is both foolhardy from the public safety point of view and will to a lesser or greater degree blight the development, effecting the development’s financial viability.  

There are various aspects of the sites vulnerability to flood and storm damage.

1 Historical

The site suffered considerable damage during the 1897 storm when various structures on the site were demolished by wave action.

It also suffered damage in the 1953 storm, most notably a 12 ton crane that had been working on the beach was swept over the sea defence and into the site by wave action.

In the 1978 storm the front of the Pleasurama arcade was stove in by the sea (the main Pleasurama building had an internal floor height higher that the frontage and after 1978 the lower front part was only used a pool area because of the water damage to the arcade machines).

Also the adjacent harbour wall suffered considerable damage, there was also damage to the sea defences from Ramsgate to Dumpton.

This information is well documented in the local paper archives.

2 Environment Agency recommendations.

On 8th February the Environment Agency sent the council and developer a letter strongly recommending a site specific flood risk assessment and emergency flood escapes, see http://michaelsbookshop.com/ea/

When I put discussed this with officers I was told that these concerns were invalid (officers implied that as the EA officer was young and female, her position as the only qualified technical specialist to examine the plans should be ignored), so I asked Laura Sandys to ask the southeast’s senior environment agency officers for their official position in writing.

This is what she sent me:

“The Pleasurama development gained planning consent prior to the publication of the latest government guidance on development and flood risk, PPS25.  When we were consulted in 2003 our floodplain maps did not show the site to be at risk and the design, at that stage, had clear evacuation routes to the top of the cliff. But, having received revised plans for the development last year, we highlighted our concern over flood risk and recommended that a site-specific flood risk assessment be undertaken.  This would inform appropriate mitigation measures such as recommended floor levels, flood resilient design and an evacuation plan to ensure that the development is made as safe as possible.”

3 Design Changes.

When the site originally gained planning consent the intention was that the development be supported on driven piles, into the chalk bedrock.

The 2005 cliff condition report http://thanetonline.com/cliff/id2.htm stated that this would be too dangerous because the vibration could trigger a cliff collapse.

The design was then changed to piles bored into the chalk bedrock (this construction method has been insisted on and adopted for the two other recent developments on Marina Esplanade, although the are both set behind modern well constructed and maintained sea defences).   

At some later time this was changed to shallow foundations only dug down as far as the top of the sand, which once formed the beach where the site is. 

Note; The site was formed by sea wave action prior to the construction of Ramsgate harbour, so the chalk bedrock is at about the level of low tide. The construction of the harbour shielded the site from the scouring action of the sea and caused a build up of sand forming a beach approximately where the site is. In 1860 chalk spoil from the railway tunnel, put on top of the sand, was used to raise the site to its present level. The inclined side of this pile of lose sand and chalk was then paved with stone slabs forming a sea defence. The existing Ramsgate sands are the result of wartime defences, prior to 1915 the sand was all below the normal high tide level. Since the removal of the wartime defences, which happened when the sand was removed for the construction of Port Ramsgate, the level of sand above the high tide line in front of the development has been variable.

4 Sea Defence.

My understanding is that the sea defence there is still the original 1860 inclined slab defence and all of the promenade structures behind and above this are founded on the pile of lose chalk and sand.

Mike has confirmed this in writing and informed me that the council, who own this sea defence, hold no construction plans or maintenance record relating to it.

In simple terms, the foundations of the development rest on sand, it isn’t screwed down to the bedrock like the other new developments down there and the only thing preventing the sand from being washed out by the sea, is a 150 year old sea wall with no maintenance record and more sand.

The only other sea defence, that I know, of that was built by the same railway company, as part of the 1860 railway expansion, was the one between Reculver and Thanet, this failed in 1953. About 10 square miles of land and about three miles of railway track were lost in one night. 

I should like to add that I think it highly inappropriate that this sea defence and flood risk assessment issue is discussed in closed session, as it relates to public safety.

Next the questions relating to the asset disposal.

Here the secrecy situation is the reverse, I am concerned that the proper asset disposal process didn’t occur at the time of issuing the 199 year leases, see http://michaelsbookshop.com/pda/id4.htm and further isn’t occurring at this stage of freehold transfer.

Harvey has assured me that this isn’t the case, but wasn’t able to provide me with a full explanation because of disclosure legislation. I am assuming that this information will be available to a closed session of the scrutiny panel.”

Best regards Michael. 

If you read or skimmed through that lot you will see I am as much trying to get to grips with the ins and outs of scrutiny as to make much sense of The Royal Sands.

The picture at the top is my unfinished first attempt at having a go at oil painting. I have been buying tubes of oil paint at the boot fairs I have been to.

Ian Driver has called the decision in.

There is an OSP extraordinary meeting on 16th August and although there are no details saying what it is about on the council’s website yet, my guess it is The Royal Sands call in.


After some difficulty negotiating the council’s website, revealed, this link should take you to the decisions page http://tdc-mg-dmz.thanet.gov.uk/mgDelegatedDecisions.aspx?XXR=0&&DR=25%2f07%2f2011-08%2f08%2f2012&ACT=Find&RP=0&K=0&V=0&DM=0&HD=0&DS=2&Next=true&META=mgdelegateddecisions&

It doesn’t seem that many decisions get called in.

The call in notice for The Royal Sands says:

This decision has been called in by:
Councillor Ian Driver who writes Reasons for call-in:

 

 1. To ensure that there has been a recent flood risk assessment of the development site;

 2. To ensure that the disposal of the site was in compliance with agreed Council processes;

 3. To ensure that the Council secured a reasonable price for the sale of the development site."



I may add to this one.  

Monday 6 August 2012

New Tower Proposed for Ramsgate Harbour

Putting up the new planning applications on the press release blog this morning I noticed the council have applied for a new radar tower on the end of the east pier.
I was reminded of  the proposal in Bob Simmonds book Ramsgate's Answer to Turner& Tracey for a Tissot Centre in Ramsgate on this same spot

Friday 3 August 2012

Ramsgate Week Ramble


Tomorrow is the last day of Ramsgate Week, to be honest I hardly noticed that it was happening, it is a local event that doesn’t seem to link well with the town.

There were quite a few visiting boats when I went out this evening, sorry about the pictures I only had my mobile phone with me.
There was a visiting MFVish boat that I found interesting, wondered what the rig would be like up and whether the sails would push her along in any meaningful way.
 The usual mix of windfarm boats were moored in the harbour, I do wonder if the town is getting the most out of this, there are a considerable amount of highly paid workers on these boats.

Most of the slipways seem out of action and I am told that it is usual for the boats to elsewhere just to get a paint job.  

We ate in the Belgian CafĂ©, which was very good, I did the inevitable sketch, my sketches there have the added dimension that the light is fairly dim so I don’t really get to see what I have done properly, until I get home.

It is a very good place to go in the evening if you have children with you, there are computers and other things to amuse them and they enjoy going there.  
I forgot to photograph the food, but did remember the children’s knickerbocker glories